Twenty-five years after of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a collaborative project between award-winning dramatist Peter Arnott, Prof. Laura Bradley of the University of Edinburgh, and ex-BBC filmmaker Susan Kemp set out to explore the issues surrounding censorship and East German theatre.

Peter used Laura’s research to create a play entitled ENSEMBLE, and Susan made a documentary film about the development of the script and process of taking it to an audience.

You can read extracts from Peter’s script and view photos of the Scottish tour here. Susan’s film, WRITING ENSEMBLE, premiered at the Glasgow Film Theatre in 2017 and has since been screened at the Edinburgh Filmhouse and Leeds Picturehouse. The next screening will be at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on 18 November 2018, as part of the Being Human Festival.

The project was developed in collaboration with the Playwrights’ Studio Scotland and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.

Image : BArch Bild 183-85946-0003 / Christa Hochneder

Tales from the Archive

Why did the East German authorities try to keep censorship secret? What problems and opportunities did this create for writers and theatre practitioners? And what role did theatres play in the 1989 protests?